hese," I said, "unless I from time to time get off by myself
somewhere long enough to tell myself how much I do enjoy them. That's
what I was cultivating solitude for when I happened just now to come
upon you. When I found you there with Lady John there was nothing for me
but to make the best of it; but I'm glad of this chance to assure you
that, every appearance to the contrary notwithstanding, I wasn't
prowling about in search of you."

"Well," my companion frankly replied, "I'm glad you turned up. I wasn't
especially amusing myself."

"Oh, I think I know how little!"

He fixed me a moment with his pathetic old face, and I knew more than
ever that I was sorry for him. I was quite extraordinarily sorry, and I
wondered whether I mightn't without offence or indiscretion really let
him see it. It was to this end I had held him and wanted a little to
keep him, and I was reassured as I felt him, though I had now released
him, linger instead of leaving me. I had made him uneasy last night, and
a new reason or two for my doing so had possibly even since then come
up; yet these things also would depend on the way he might take them.
The look with which he at present faced me seemed to hint that he would
take them as I hoped, and there was no curtness, but on the contrary the
dawn of a dim sense that I might possibly aid him, in the tone with
which he came half-way. "You 'know'?"

"Ah," I laughed, "I know everything!"

He didn't laugh; I hadn't seen him laugh, at Newmarch, once; he was
continuously, portentously grave, and I at present remembered how the
effect of this had told for me at luncheon, contrasted as it was with
that of Mrs. Server's desperate, exquisite levity. "You know I decidedly
have too much of that dreadful old woman?"

There was a sound in the question that would have made me, to my own
sense, start, though I as quickly hoped I had not done so to
Brissenden's. I couldn't have persuaded myself, however, that I had
escaped showing him the flush of my effort to show nothing. I had taken
his disgusted allusion as to Mrs. Brissenden, and the action of that
was upsetting. But nothing, fortunately, was psychologically more
interesting than to grasp the next moment the truth of his reference. It
was only the fact of his himself looking so much older than Lady John
that had blinded me for an instant to the propriety of his not thinking
of her as young. She wasn't young as _he_ had a right to call people,
and I